H.'s comprehensive critical edition of the Batrachomyomachia is an essential resource for scholars and students interested in this long-marginalised text. Known also as Batrachomachia (‘Battle with the Frogs’) in antiquity, this anonymous epic poem derives from mock-epic and fabular traditions portraying mice in martial combat with other animals and was probably written between the third century bce and the early first century ce. H. provides a new English translation, a new Greek text with a detailed apparatus criticus, a thorough line-by-line commentary and a generous introduction that addresses possible authorship and likely dates of publication as well as matters of genre, language, style, metre and literary influences. Other highlights include a clear explanation of the (chaotic) manuscript tradition and an account of the reception of the work, whose popularity waned during the nineteenth century, when scholars began to dismiss it as a childish fable aping Homeric epic. It is safe to say that the reputation of the Batrachomyomachia has never really recovered from that trivialisation.

In H.'s view ‘the fundamental joke of the poem is exactly that it treats mouse and frog warriors as though they were as formidable and dangerous as Achilles or Hector’ (p. 20). He convincingly demonstrates both its artistic merit and its claims on moral resonance – no small task given the difficulty of interpreting such an unusual work. Scholarly neglect in the modern period, he explains, emerged from two (false) assumptions: that the poem represents the earliest example of parody and that parody began as a funny, satirical genre that ridicules and criticises through imitation – elements that are unfortunately absent from this particular poem. Ancient parodia, as H. reminds the reader, was thematically diverse, and although the Batrachomyomachia is not mentioned in extant discussions of the genre, it does share one critical strategy with all known examples: the reapplication (and alteration) of elements from one text to another (p. 17). This reading is associated with what H. describes as the ‘Hellenistic school’ of Batrachomyomachia criticism, citing G. Most, A. Sens and A. Kelly, all of whom ‘share the basic assumption that the BM is engaged in the kind of self-aware and playful interaction with a model text that is nigh-universally agreed to characterize Hellenistic literature’ (p. 59). Much like Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, the poem tickles the reader's intellect by rearranging Homeric material without repeating Homeric lines verbatim. H. accordingly (and rightly, in my view) characterises the poem as a playful exercise in literary style, a species of ancient parody that reapplies Homeric themes within animal narrative. That is, parodia, not parody.

H. scrupulously collates the nine most significant manuscripts within a single Greek text, thus setting his work apart from that of R. Glei, whose 1984 edition presents two separate Greek texts drawn from the main manuscript families (Oxford and Florentine), and that of A. Ludwich, who aimed at collating more than 80 extant manuscripts in his 1894 edition. Variant readings in the apparatus criticus have been selected according to sense, viability, iteration and the likelihood of intentional (rather than accidental) variation. H. tempers what one might call anomalous and analogous editorial practices with the guiding principle of internal consistency: the poem establishes consistent patterns and follows its own rules (p. 79). H.'s goal is ‘to preserve, rather than rebuild’ (p. 65), and to provide a best guess at what a complete version (rather than ‘the’ complete version) would look like.

The English translation is modelled on Lattimore's Iliad and Odyssey with respect to the goals of preserving word order and translating as literally and precisely as possible. I suspect that the desire to increase scholarly interest in the Batrachomyomachia may have influenced H.'s decision to transliterate Greek names in contrast to the more explicitly comic English translations in M. West's Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer (2003) and D. Hine's Works of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns (2005). The poem begins with a chance encounter between the frog king ‘Physignathus’ and the doomed mouse ‘Psicharpax’, names that clearly model a more serious and heroic register than ‘Puffjawe’ and ‘Filchcrumbe’ (West) or ‘Swellcheek’ and ‘Crumbgrabber’ (Hine). H. provides English translations of the names in the commentary and in a separate index of characters, but acknowledges a preference for the ‘distancing effect’ of the Greek originals, adding that English readers of Homer would be accustomed to grand and unfamiliar names like Achilles and Patroclus, not ‘Peoplesgrief’ and ‘Fatherfame’ (p. 85). It is a tricky line to walk: H.'s rationale is clear and in keeping with his editorial goals but, on the other hand, grand and unfamiliar names like ‘Pternoglyphus’ (aka ‘Ham-nibble’) are less than playful, and the tone of this work is surely less serious, or at least serious in a different way, than that of Homeric epic.

The line-by-line commentary offers guidance and discussion across a wide range of issues including grammatical and textual problems, errors in narrative continuity, alternative readings, internal and external allusions, and parallels with Homer and Hellenistic poets. It is divided into sections on significant elements and events (proem, speeches and deaths of individuals, meetings, ending of the conflict etc.). These sections are not included on the contents page, but a list in the front matter or among the indexes would have been helpful.

While the commentary is, then, extensive and admirably meticulous, an analysis of discrepancies in gender representation would have been welcome. Female characters are prominent in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, but female frogs and mice have no active roles in this poem and are named only as relatives of male heroes. Some consideration of this lack of prominent female characters, given the tone and emulative nature of the work, would be appropriate. Athena does have a long speech (ll. 178–95), but she quite intentionally avoids the conflict. H. discusses this comic inversion of Athena (n. 193) as well as that of Zeus, the only god to be amused by the conflict and to favour a side (the frogs). Athena refuses to participate because she dislikes mice for nibbling holes in her clothing and frogs for disrupting her sleep, and she persuades the other gods to avoid combat and the threat of being wounded by a spear (βέλει, l. 194). H. misses an etymological jest here inasmuch as the word βέλος is linked with the word for ‘needle’ (βελόνη), the weapon wielded by the mice (ll. 129–31):

H. acknowledges the ‘parodic elevation’ of common sewing needles and suggests that humour may arise from the fact that ‘unlike a spear, a needle is not in fact designed for combat’ (n. 130). Clearly true (the nature of the material all but enforces obvious statements of this sort), yet such an observation is equally applicable to lamp lids and chickpea shells. One of the consistent patterns in this poem is the heroic repurposing of common elements (from nature for frogs or the household for mice) for battle on a very small scale. H.'s reading of the wounded Physignathus’ retreat as cowardly and reminiscent of the Homeric Aphrodite overemphasises domesticity: ‘he has been wounded by a household object associated with clothing and female spheres of activity, a needle’ (n. 248). Leaving the battle marks Physignathus as a coward, perhaps; yet if we are to see him as a coward for being wounded by a needle, then the mice would presumably be equally if not more cowardly for using them.

Minor criticisms and differences or refinements of interpretation such as these are to be expected even in favourable reviews of an exemplary work of scholarship like the present volume. To paraphrase H., who observes that the ‘reader of the BM – much like the reader of Callimachus or Apollonius – must be able not only to recall what Homer does, but to notice what he does not do’ (p. 37), it is up to reviewers not only to comment on what the author does, but to consider what he does not do, and in this case omissions are difficult to pinpoint, and by no means detract from H.'s contribution to our knowledge of a poem that has been overlooked and underestimated for far too long.